It's good to know that in a sports world where nothing is guaranteed, where the Yankees can swear that A-Rod will never play for them again and then give him $300 million three weeks later, where coaches sign 10-year contracts and then rip them up the next season, that one thing is set in concrete:

The Big East bowl structure.

The eight conference teams know it's awful. The fans know it's awful. Even the commissioner knows it's awful, and he made a rare appearance on the Big East teleconference this week to tell everybody so. Mike Tranghese was practically apologizing for his sorry lineup.

"We had no leverage, and to be quite candid and blunt, we were lucky to get what we got," Tranghese said. "(But) there is clearly more interest in our league now than four years ago, and our bowl lineup next time around should be much better."

This is the problem: Next time around is still two years away. That is an eternity in college football.

Nobody at Rutgers wants to think about this, but what if this is the program's zenith? What if the incoming recruits don't live up to their hype, or Greg Schiano leaves for another job, and the Scarlet Knights slide back to mediocrity. It happens all the time in college football.

Rutgers would then have the misfortune of having its best years correlate with what we'll call the PapaJohns.Com Bowl Era in the Big East, where first place might get you the BCS title game (like West Virginia this year) and second place gets you tickets to Charlotte for the Muffler Bowl (have a nice trip, UConn).

The scary part? The Big East actually got lucky this year. Had Notre Dame finished six victories, the Fighting Irish could have stolen a spot in the Gator Bowl, which would prompt the Sun Bowl to take a Big 12 team.

Follow the dominos: South Florida might have ended up in Charlotte, Connecticut - at 9-3 and in second place - in Birmingham for the aforementioned Pizza Bowl, and Rutgers and Cincinnati jockeying for the International Bowl. Say Rutgers, with a bigger fan base, got the spot in Toronto.

Would there even be a bowl for 9-3 Cincy?

Tranghese is one of the most powerful men in college sports and he deserves credit for saving his conference. Honestly, who could imagine, two years ago, that the Big East would remain a BCS fixture after losing Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College?

But now, he has to figure out a way to fix the lousy second-tier bowl games before the contract runs up. Money has a unique way of making things happen. If the Big East really is much more attractive due to the high television ratings, then there must be a way to capitalize on that now. Get creative.

Nothing is set in stone in the world of sports - we learn that every day. Tranghese understands the importance of improving the bowl structure in the Big East. Now, he needs to make that happen, with an emphasis on one word: